Page 31 of Miss Harvey's Horribly Lovable Fiancé
Allowing her husband-to-be to be manipulated to support his unworthy father.
Or would she end it all?
* * *
“You look marvelous, my darling.”
Esme gazed into Giles’s appreciative hazel eyes and wound her arm through his. They stood in a niche on the balcony overlooking the ballroom. In his elaborate cravat, silver silk waistcoat and black formal attire, her fiancé was an astonishingly handsome fellow. She ached to belong to him. Lust was certainly a powerful pull. She could marry him and live on the fires of that for years. What afterward, eh, if she were ashamed of how she’d allowed her father and her husband to be so abused by the duke of Brentford?
What to do? What to do?
With a smile she faked utterly, she shook back her curls and met Giles’s mesmerizing gaze. “You are quite dashing yourself, sir.”
He patted her gloved hand, pain slashing the joy on his face as he turned to survey the assembled guests in all their finery. “What a crush this is,” he said and pressed her nearer to him. “I want to run away with you now.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “As do I.”Then I could forget all this noise in my head.
He groaned and drew her back to the wall, away from view. Two fingers to her chin, he drew up her face and pressed a ravenous kiss to her lips. “I adore you. Always remember. Promise me.”
“I will,” she said, enthralled by his ardor.
“Come quickly.” He laughed. “Before I abscond with you!”
She laughed too as he arched brows that reproved her and made them both into respectable toffs.
Then he led her from the balcony down the steps to the dais. There the musicians sat and struck up the music for the first set of the evening.
Her mother and father conversed together near one corner. Esme could tell by the look on their faces that Papa was telling his wife what he and Esme had discussed. And her Mama was not happy with that. Not at all.
“We’re to lead out the second selection,” she told Giles. “Have you word yet from your father?”
Giles paused, his arm pressing her close. “None.”
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “The good news is that the weather is cool, but no rain to delay your man.”
“Samuel Chesters has never let me down before. I have confidence in him.”
She had no confidence in his father, but she squeezed Giles’s hand. “Then so do I.”
His gaze turned bright and gay in the copious candlelight. “In fact, if the man has refused this latest offer, I have another.”
She clutched his arm. “Oh, my darling, you cannot continue to negotiate with him.”
He clasped her hand to his heart. Beneath her fingertips the sinuous silk of his cravat heated with his strong pulse. A few others in the crush of the ballroom looked on at his affection, and yet he did not relent. “I will do anything to have you. And this last offer I have for him is one he cannot refuse.”
She stared at him.
“Trust me, please.”
“Of course,” she said, but trusting him would not remedy what his father would do.
Was her charming Northington dreaming? It might be the last time they stood together and shared the heat of a desire so unique tears sprang to her eyes.
She feared that all she had hoped for was lost. That she would never be able to prove to her loving father that she prized his love and his gifts to her. That she would never be able to show the man she loved that she prized his ethical stance against the man who would destroy Giles’s good name with his own bad one.
Fate, destiny, the tension of one’s character against the strains of another—all were cruel.
“That’s the longest set I’ve ever heard.” He looked upon the floor, happy it seemed, even eager to take it with her.
